


Float On

by Immi



Series: F is For Friends [2]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-02
Updated: 2017-03-02
Packaged: 2018-09-27 19:18:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10041005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Immi/pseuds/Immi
Summary: Finding privacy in a largely abandoned facility is not a hard thing to do. Fortunately, keeping it continues to present a challenge.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This wasn't supposed to be a series, but now it is. Title from the Modest Mouse song. Star Wars reference is blatant and unapologetic.

Stalking through hallways in the dead of night was not an unusual activity for Genji. In both his lifetimes, there had always been a use for befriending the shadows. The work of a ninja did not invite brightness simply because he happened to glow now. It was one of the many constants that his master had taught him to dwell upon. The man he was had been remade, but the simple pleasures they shared were not as lost as they seemed.

Such as the freedom of walking through the catacombs of Gibraltar without a host of frightened agents staring at him—or actively not. He was glad for the convenience, and continued to be glad as he hurried into the abandoned conference room he was seeking and gently closed the door behind him.

The room shared in the emptiness that shrouded the rest of the base. He was alone.

He located the spot on the floor with the best vantage points, and eased into his meditation stance. A quiet mind would do him good for this.

He slid back the mobile cover of his forearm and twirled the screwdriver he had acquired with enough artistry that it could almost look familiar in his hand.

So much would be simpler if that were only the case.

As a boy, he had never given his equipment much thought. His training had captivated him only as long as the lessons lasted, and most of his skills had been honed through sneaking out of his bedroom to visit the arcade (“The _eyesore_ ,” their father repeatedly called it). Long talks of honor and pride and the importance of their gifts could stay with Hanzo. His shuriken and blades would always catch his eye, but as for their sheathes, his concern was limited. That was what servants were for.

That mindset could not stay once he found himself embroiled in the training’s true purpose. His tools were his life, and sloppy maintenance could mean his head.

Those talks were practical enough, and they stuck.

His solution to his shuriken holder jamming was still, more often than not, to pester their armory into giving him a new one. They had resources; no one else having the sense to take advantage of them wasn’t any problem of his.

When that left him hiding in an abandoned conference room with a screwdriver and a prayer because his casual relationship with material goods that truly mattered had put a hard limit on his ability to repair his own arm—

That, as with many of the things he had once dismissed, was a problem of his.

He had learned his new body well in the past ten years, keeping up with regular maintenance checks even in isolation. A refusal to allow anyone else to see him at his most vulnerable had taught him many things that Hanzo’s lecturing tone could not. He was now one with his equipment. He would replace what he could when necessary, but he would have to know how to care for his self.

In most cases, he would admit to rousing success.

The mechanism responsible for reloading his shuriken continued to defy him.

A simple enough thing, built on technology far more outdated than the rest of him, it was a near copy of what he had used in his youth, with the only difference being that it was part of him. His armory raiding strategies were now rendered largely useless unless he had a pressing desire to approach his new fellows and request their aid.

He did not.

He was fully capable of understanding his own arm, and with such a simple thing, identifying the problem came easily. Despite spending most of its time protected by his exoskeleton, dirt and other inconvenient particles did make their way in, and if they were sizable enough, a jam was inevitable.

A simple problem with a simple fix. Remove the blockage, and clean out any debris that remained. Preferably with the shuriken taken out first. He had, several times, found the end of his task by simply willing that function of his arm to exert enough force to break through the obstruction.

When that failed, the simple fix became slightly more extensive. His hands, perfectly versed in any number of dexterous challenges, had fingers of a size that refused to ease between the delicate gap of the reloading mechanism with any grace. Having more than one to work with was his master’s kind suggestion.

Maybe, in a different place, at a different time, that would be an option that didn’t make his heart recoil. Today, he was where his superiors might have sat when they’d seen his rage for a weapon.

Zenyatta’s influence had banished the impulse to hate them for that, but the sensitivity caught fast.

Genji twisted the screwdriver carefully around inside his arm, searching for the spot of complete neural numbness that would always lead him to the problem. All it should take was nudging the clump of sand—that was most likely, given his recent wandering—out, or into smaller pieces, and—

And nothing, evidently.

The screech of metal jarred his senses, and his automatic retreat had no effect on the screwdriver that was now standing erect in his forearm.

One of Genji’s other lessons from the past ten years was that he was a very poor mechanic.

An earlier one, ingrained in any bone that presumed to make up his vessel, said that noises like that nearly always brought an otherwise successful mission to a brutal end, and his body obediently tensed, waiting for the ensuing catastrophe.

But no one was lurking in the dark underbelly of the new Overwatch to hear his mechanical failures.

Genji took a calming breath, more for the mental benefits than any need, and slipped his eyes closed. His free hand fell into position over his chest, and murmurs of his master’s instruction echoed in his mind as he released his stress.

There was still much to be found in this place. Serenity did not trap him easily. It was only a healthy amount of stubbornness that helped the reverse along for brief instants.

He breathed steadily, feeling the beat of his original heart, and the soft sting of his remaining skin; and the easy, resolute power that wound through all that was new, and still worked to keep him alive.

Peace returned. The spot of numbness in his arm faded to an irrelevant background.

He would have stayed in that still, contented world as long as it had him if his senses didn’t catch the end of his isolation stepping down the hallway.

Genji blinked himself back. Quickly as he could, he squashed whatever surprise had worked its way into his body language. He was coming to know those footsteps very well; the silence was attracted to them, much in the same way it shadowed Hanzo. The quiet embraced them both so easily. What they never seemed to realize was how clearly that made them stand out next to it.

Especially to Genji’s hearing.

He had no reason to believe the younger Captain Amari was aware of his running tally of times they had successfully snuck up on each other. Nonetheless, he thought to himself—back straight, head cocked expectantly, and eyes on the opening door—he was sure that it bothered her that he was winning.

He supposed he had Hanzo to thank for keeping the broad grin on his soul hidden. When Captain Amari walked through the door, thoroughly lost in whatever she was reading on her phone, he had a full second of free observation before her head snapped up and she made eye contact.

The shock only lasted a fraction of that, but he saw it.

Point Genji.

Then he caught the wobble of the screwdriver protruding from his arm, and Captain Amari’s sauntering gaze over to it, and reconsidered the scoring distribution.

Captain Amari, without a twitch betraying the delight that she was stealing out from under him, took one look at him and his partially dismantled arm, pocketed her phone, and said, with all the security that came from the world crafting her for moments like these, “Need a hand?”

He had his suspicions that this woman could deny the union of awkwardness and silence through sheer force of rhetorical enjoyment.

He took advantage of that to stray from an immediate answer. Much like the sunrise last month, when his interruption had transformed it into a shared experience, and their multiple encounters since then, her offer was presented in a way that felt removed from the social pressures that had defined too much of his previous life at Overwatch. He lingered on the tattoo under her eye. This was an honest choice, and his to make.

Never mind that she was throwing it to him after walking in on him in one of the most secluded areas of the base. Some would consider the choice made from that alone.

And it had resulted in him sitting, alone, in a dark, abandoned conference room, with a screwdriver sticking out of his arm.

A standard beginning for his exploits in personal growth, Master would say.

Captain Amari, through long practice or quirk of personality, said nothing, and it was a relief.

“Yes,” he arrived at. “But I can make do with yours.”

The captain lit up. Not in her face—too much time letting orders rule your life stole that away—but in the lightness in her shoulders, and in the steps she took before joining him on the floor. Helping made her soul sing, and brought his back to an even pitch.

“Jammed?” she asked.

“Very.”

She took a closer look, her breath misting his hand. He could see her eyes darting about with surprising precision, the lack of light hardly any obstacle at all. “I don’t like sand,” she murmured. “It’s coarse and rough and irritating, and it gets everywhere.”

A flash to a history Genji had never wanted came to mind vividly, and curiosity propelled him forward.

“You’ve seen those movies?”

“All fourteen,” Captain Amari said promptly. She examined the stuck screwdriver for a moment before grabbing hold. “You?”

There were ways, Genji had learned, to speak of his experiences without making his listener so appalled that they chose to forego all acquaintanceship. With Captain Amari, he was unsure if he chose not to use them because they were exhausting, or if he trusted the burgeoning kinship they were finding together.

“I reached the episode where the brothers-in-arms attempted to murder one another, and one was left for dead to become a cybernetic monstrosity.” He paused. “I chose to stop watching.”

That remained the civilized way of terming how his hospital-issued remote had found itself making impact with the projector set at the foot of his bed.

It had been the day before he would be medically cleared to respond to Overwatch’s interrogations. In truthful terms, the day before he officially chose to burn his family’s empire to the ground for what they had taken from him. The hospital’s entertainment system had not helped his feelings on the matter. Neither had the multitude of unkind words he shouted at Angela when she rushed into the ward to investigate the crash.

He was no longer that man. He would never stop being grateful for that gift.

“Out for movie night then,” Fareeha said, bringing him back.

“That would be preferred.”

He waited for a follow-up, but she just nodded, taking the screwdriver and gently easing it out to the slow sound of grating metal. Genji stayed focused on keeping as much of the arm relaxed as he could while she worked.

It was surprisingly easy.

Not at all what he had been bracing himself for when he chose to come down here.

Some healing, his master once told him, was like that. The harm of trusting a pattern to repeat could become a self-fulfilling prophecy, and once removed, so too would be the damage. It only took the courage to try a new path.

Genji had been fortunate. Most of the courage that saved him was owed to others.

He watched the casual tension in his friend’s arms as she assisted with his, the traces of scar tissue over her steady fingers reflecting his light. He had seen similar marks covering Torbjörn’s hand years ago. As well as last week. The rougher calluses of mechanical craftsmanship.

“I avoided asking for help,” he said. Out loud, for once. “In many things, but with this in particular. I didn’t wish to remind anyone that some things are still a transition.”

Captain Amari deftly prodded the screwdriver back in, managing to hit the exact spot his awkward attempts had aimed for. He heard something loosen before he felt it. Small grains of sand rolled down the insides of his arm, and she reached in and flicked several of them to the floor.

“My mother,” she said, in the tone of someone who would be beginning stories this way until the day she died, “walked into a wall yesterday. She then pretended it was intentional.” She hesitated, catching his eye. The glimmer of a smile in her voice left. “Before I came in here, I tried to call my former captain about using some of our old Helix gear.” She dusted more sand out of Genji’s arm. “He’s dead.”

She manipulated the screwdriver with another twist before the statement could linger, and sensation came back to Genji’s arm as a large clump popped free and skittered across the degraded carpet. They were making a mess. Judging by the dust content of the room, it wasn’t one that would be attended to quickly without their further involvement.

Genji pulled back his freed arm and pumped the reload mechanism through its paces several times under his friend’s careful eye. It worked smoothly. He would make sure to be especially careful cleaning it when he returned to his quarters.

“I am repaired,” he said. “Thank you.”

“Any time.” Captain Amari stood up, making to leave him alone again.

A respectful sentiment.

“…Did it work?”

She turned back, eyebrow cocked in question.

“Your mother’s tactic,” he clarified, rising to his feet.

Captain Amari scoffed, grinning at him. “Have you met my mother?”

“Of course it worked,” they said together.


End file.
